YouTube and Hangouts updates on Android bring plethora of new features

A Wednesday isn’t complete without a couple app updates from Google, right? Today’s updated apps from the Mountain View-based company include YouTube and Hangouts, both of which got new and improves features in their latest releases.

YouTube’s update to version 5.7 brings the ability to manually select the quality of a video that’s playing. Android Police reports that users can set the video quality anywhere from 144p to 720p, but readers of ours have noted that 1080p manual options are available on certain devices. There’s also an automatic option, which will choose the best resolution for the user’s current Internet connection speed.

The Hangouts update to version 2.1.223 adds per-contact notification tones, an SMS block list, and more. The per-contact notification tones are available in the “People & options” menu in Hangouts chats, and work entirely as expected. SMS blocking, while not a new feature, has been made easier to manage — if you decide that you want to remove someone’s banishment from communication with you, the unified list makes this very simple.

There’s also now a keyboard toggle button to switch between the regular keyboard and the number pad, which was a little confusing to use in our testing. Finally, there’s now a “Hidden Contacts” option. If you decide you don’t want a particular contact to show up on your list, you can press and hold to hide them. They’ll then be made available to access in the “Hidden Contacts” list.

Downloads for both applications have been made available by Android Police. Be sure to go download the apps and try them out if you just cannot wait for the OTA updates from Google to make their way to you.